ATASCADERO  A small group of residents put their might and their hearts into cleaning brush and litter from Atascadero Lake Saturday.

I saw the sign the other day when I was walking  Ive been wanting to get involved, said Arline Weems of Atascadero, originally of Santa Margarita. Ive come here since I was a kid and we used to swim in the lake.

The lake has seen some hard times this year with drought conditions causing the body of water to shrink to a puddle of its former self and facing a massive fish die-off this summer due to low oxygen levels.

Residents living near the lake became dismayed, they said, watching the lake disappear and decided to form a sort of a lake-booster group this spring calling itself, Friends of the Atascadero Lake.